Mobile phone applications designed to track and quell the spread of the coronavirus in Norway, Kuwait and Bahrain are highly intrusive and put users' privacy in danger, a prominent rights group found
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th June, 2020) mobile phone applications designed to track and quell the spread of the coronavirus in Norway, Kuwait and Bahrain are highly intrusive and put users' privacy in danger, a prominent rights group found.
Amnesty International's Security Lab reviewed contact tracing apps from a number of countries in Europe, the middle East and North Africa and found that the apps from Norway and the two Gulf neighbors stood out for actively tracking users' GPS data in a live or near-live manner.
"Bahrain, Kuwait and Norway have run roughshod over people's privacy, with highly invasive surveillance tools which go far beyond what is justified in efforts to tackle COVID-19. Privacy must not be another casualty as governments rush to roll out apps," Claudio Guarnieri, Head of Amnesty International's Security Lab, said in the report.
Norway on Monday announced it would pause the use of the app to reprogram essential parts. Amnesty lauded the decision and called on Kuwait and Bahrain to do the same.
"The Norwegian app was highly invasive and the decision to go back to the drawing board is the right one. We urge the Bahraini and Kuwaiti governments to also immediately halt the use of such intrusive apps in their current form," Guarnieri went on to say.
Guarnieri stressed that broadcasting the locations of users at all times to government databases is unlikely to be necessary and proportionate in the context of public health response.
The report went on to detail worrisome practices in other countries that use a centralized tracking system and local databases, such as France, Iceland, Tunisia and others. However, Amnesty said that apps from those countries have an additional layer of protection because they require users' consent every time the app is to upload locations to servers.
Qatar's domestic coronavirus app, called "Ehtarez," contained a critical vulnerability that could expose the private data of up to one million people if hacked, the report said, but it has since been fixed.
